Wood River times. [volume] (Hailey, Idaho) 1882-1915, 1887-05-05
NEW YORK RESTAURANTS,
Some Notes on Subject of General
Interest.
fSparal (yorrespondap,a1

| Especial Correspondence
New YORK, April 81
! In my walks about this big city have made
| 1t point to investigate the food question.
eating where | could and looking on at the
| poorest places The cost of square meal'
ranges from S5 down to three cents; but if
| one adds wine or early fruits to his epicurean
dinner he may easily run the cost away above
IS.
At the head of the elegant places for food
absorption we may place Demonicos and the
Hoffman house restaurants, with a few club
| dining rooms: and at these one may dine for
So or luxuriate for $50 Next to these are per-
haps dozen places where one can live for
from So to 50 day; and then comes the great
middle claSs--the restaurants where clerks
and business men take their hurried midday
lunch and some 200, 900 people board. OF this
class the city contains some 1000, well dis
tributed i'll all sections except upon tho finest
residence streets. In those the steak, roast
fish, meat pies nation chop or other standard
dish sells for fifteen cents, bread and potatoes
free with each meat order. All sorts of soup
ten cents; coffee, tea, chocolate or milk five
cents cup. But dishes to order" are twen-
ty-ilve cents each, and one may go much
higher ON Injuries. One may live first rate
at any of these at IS per week
Next are those of which "Jim Fisk on tho
Bowery is type, where dishes are ten cents
each. The food is good and the place clean;
the cheapness is in the lower rent and the
absence of style. A little further east or
south are nine cent and eight cent places; the
food is still tolerably good, but there are no
napkins, no pictures ON the walls, no elegant
queens ware, and general free and easiness
which Is only attractive for while
Going next to that tangled wilderness of
narrow streets and alleys stretching north
and east from the old Five Points we find a
great drop-to the five cent and six cent
places In region not more than three
quarters of a mile square live about 200 600
people. Saloons and restaurants are below
the level of the sidewalk, and entered by a
short fight Of steps; the carpet is sawdust
the plates often of metal and one eats at a
counter or stands and holds his
OF nearly all races, from Greek to
Chinanan, and dishes retail at from three
to six cents. The bread is dark and coarse,
the coffee of the cheapest, and III few places
your metal plates are chained fast to the
counter Otherwise late hour guest might
spoil II by hitting some one on the head with
IT, Yet they give pretty god measure of
pork and beans, stewed potatoes, meat pies
and the like; and if one could forget t,,1a. much
of the food Is the ''leayinss' of good hotels
hungry man could dlne there with relish.
There are a few, very few, where the dishes
ere still cheaper-little measures of food
at two cents each-and finally benevo-
lent society has even established street
stands in several parts of the city where
PLAN food goes at one cent a disE-actual
cost. And still many thousands live at home
even more cheaply. Away up in the garrets
of tenement houses, forlorn old women and
broken down men manage to maintain life
and strength at total cost for food of fifty
cents II week. They buy the article cheapest
at the season and stew it over the same fire
that warns them, or a dozen or more com.
bine Oh a little oil stove, and so they live
that is, il that may be called living, which is
only weary and incessant struggle to esrape
the grasp OF death. j. Il. PAEkE.